Today's videoconferencing systems have improved in quality to provide a sense of remote conference participants being present. Hence they are commonly called “telepresence systems.” One example is the CISCO CTS3000 Telepresence system, by Cisco Systems, Inc. In a videoconferencing room set up for such a videoconferencing system, seating locations are fixed. Cameras have a fixed focus, zoom, and angle to reproduce each member in a life-size “close-up” on the matched video display.
Customers have other conference rooms that they would like to use for telepresence conferencing. In these rooms, the seating locations may vary greatly from meeting to meeting.
Some existing telepresence systems use actual pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) and/or electronic PTZ (EPTZ) cameras. Whether actual pan-tilt-zoom, or electronic, the cameras must be manually steered by a person to achieve a good view. While this is bothersome with one camera, it becomes untenable in a multi-camera situation. Thus, it is desirable to use a plurality of cameras that automatically seek out good close-up people views of each participant.